Parmenides On Reality
Peter Kingsley is controversial. A highly educated scholar specializing in ancient Greek philosophy, Kingsley is himself a self-described mystic. Academia in general much prefers to dismiss any references to mysticism as reported by the ancients as a sort of amusing illustration of a sadly uneducated worldview that has now been surpassed by the vastly superior intellectual understanding of reality of which academia itself is now the revered guardian. So when Peter Kingsley arrives on the scene, applies his considerable skills in translating the pre-Socratics, and then declares that these men were essentially the Greek equivalent of shamans, other academics go into figurative hysterics. Especially when one of Kingsley's main subjects happens to be the man generally accepted to be the father of reason itself, the man our intellectual elite regard as the one who first demonstrated the absolute primacy of logic. His name was Parmenides.
All that survives of Parmenides' work today is a single poem, On Reality, and of the poem itself, only fragments exist. Further, the extant fragments are themselves copies written centuries after his death, so like many ancient texts, are subject to the almost inevitable mistranslations, distortions, or outright edits imposed by others. What remains then is tenuous at best, but it's a single line that has fascinated scholars since its discovery. That single line is, “Judge by reason”.
In his tour de force Reality, Kingsley makes the argument that the translation of the Greek logos into “reason”, the process of weighing options that we understand it to mean today, did not come about until Plato, who lived a century later. Kingsley contends that in Parmenides time, logos simply meant “talk, discussion, words said.” Let's set that aside, though. Let's go ahead and assume that he did mean “reason” as we understand it today.
If we are to judge by reason, what are we to judge? (I cannot emphasize the value of reading Kingsley’s full interpretation in Reality enough. Please realize that my effort to condense things here into a single blog post is necessarily woefully inadequate).
Parmenides poem begins with a journey. Not just any journey, either. Parmenides is traveling in a chariot, as “the axle in the hubs let out the sound of a pipe”, accompanied by young women, the daughters of the Sun, who transport him to the underworld. Here he meets a nameless goddess, and our narration begins:
“And the goddess welcomed me kindly, and took my right hand in hers and spoke these words as she addressed me: “Welcome young man, partnered by immortal charioteers, reaching our home with the mares that carry you. For it was no hard fate that sent you traveling this road – so far away from the beaten track of humans – but Rightness and Justice. And what's needed is for you to learn all things: both the unshaken heart of persuasive Truth and the opinions of mortals in which there is nothing that can be truthfully trusted at all. But even so, this too you will learn – how beliefs based on appearance ought to be believable as they travel all through all there is”
Reality, Page 27
For those unfamiliar with ancient Greek colloquialism, a “hard fate” was a synonym for death, which is a pretty strong indication of where Parminedes now finds himself. Our goddess continues, and she's both demanding and unforgiving...
“I will do the talking; and it's up to you to carry away my words once you have heard them. What I will tell you is which roads of inquiry, and which roads alone, exist for thinking. The one route, that is, and is not possible not to be, is the way of Persuasion; for Persuasion is Truth's attendant. And as for the other, that is not, and is necessary not to be; this, I can tell you, is a path from which no news returns. For there is no way you can recognize what is not – there is no traveling that path – or tell anything about it.”
PP 60
If “no news returns” from a loved one at war, it was assumed they would not return; this phrase suggests a dead end. “There is no way you can recognize what is not”. So, how's the foundational text underlying the entire structure of human reasoning and logic going so far? Our goddess is just getting started:
“See how it is that things far away are firmly present to your mind. For however much you want to, there is no way you will manage to cut being off from clinging fast to being.
“What exists for saying and for thinking must be. For it exists for it to be; but nothing does not exist.
“You ponder that!
“This is the first road of inquiry that I hold you back from. But then I hold you back as well from the one that mortals fabricate, twin-heads, knowing nothing. For helplessness in their chests is what steers their wandering minds as they are carried along in a daze, deaf and blind at the same time: indistinguishable, undistinguishing crowds who reckon that being and non-being are the same but not the same. And, for all of them, the route they follow is a path that keeps turning backwards on itself.”
PP 79, 83
“See how it is that things far away are firmly present to your mind”. Please consider this line within the context of the previous posts here exploring the role of thought in our interpretation of reality. For things far away to be firmly present to your mind, in what form can they be present?
Also, “Nothing does not exist” is a single line that should be noted. One can also say that the only thing that cannot not exist is existence itself, but I'm probably getting ahead of myself here. Back to our goddess.
“From this path of inquiry hold your mind away. And don't let much experienced habit force you to guide your sightless eye and echoing ear and tongue along this way, but judge in favor of the highly contentious demonstration of the truth contained in these words as spoken by me.”
PP120, 140
I've used Kingsley's translation here, but the italicized text represents what is usually translated as “judge by reason”. We're almost to the payoff. What is it we are to judge? (Attentive readers will notice that we aren't being asked to judge anything if we accept Kingsley's translation as correct. We're instead being commanded to judge in favor of the goddesses words). She's about to be extremely unforgiving with her application of logic, nevertheless.
“There's only one tale of a path left to tell: that is. And along this way there are many, many signs that as well as being birthless it's also deathless and whole and of a single kind and unmoving – and neither is it incomplete.
“It never was and never will be because it is now, all together, one, holding to itself. For what possible birth of it will you look for? In what way could it have grown? From what? To say or think “from what is not” is something I won't allow you because there is no saying or thinking that is not. And, besides: if started out from nothing, what could have made it come into being later rather than sooner? So it must either be, completely, or not be. Neither will the strength of persuasive proof ever permit anything to come into being out of non-being alongside it. And this is why Justice has not allowed freedom for creation or destruction by relaxing her constraining grip. Instead, she holds fast. And the decision in these matters comes down to this – is or is not. But it has already been decided: the judgment has already been passed as necessary that the second of these paths is to be dismissed as unthinkable and unnameable because it's no true way while the other is allowed to be, and really be. And how could it be that being could be at some later time? How could it come into being? For if it came to be, it is not; and if at some point it intends to be, then again it is not. So it is that creation has been extinguished, and of destruction there is not a word to be heard.”
PP 160, 163-164
“So it is that creation has been extinguished, and of destruction there is not a word to be heard.” Parmenides has arrived in the world of the dead, only to learn that neither creation (birth) or destruction (death) are genuine. What conclusion is the ruthless application of logic and reason exercised by our goddess leading us to?
“And what exists for thinking is the same as the cause of thought. For you won't find thinking without the being in which it has been uttered. For there is nothing else and will be nothing else apart from being, because Fate has bound it to be whole, unmoving. It's name shall be everything – every single name that mortals have invented convinced they are all true: birth and death, existence, non-existence, change of place, alteration of bright color.
“Because there is an ultimate binding limit, this means it is perfectly complete – just like the bulk of a sphere neatly rounded off from each direction, equally matched from the middle on every side.”
PP 180, 179
So here we are. In the fragments that remain from the solitary work that exists from Parmenides, the thinker upon which humanity has constructed our entire palace of an objective reality and the primacy of reason, the edifice that has led to your reading these words on an electronic device of some sort, reason and logic have been applied to demonstrate that the true nature of reality is simply being, “for there is nothing else and will be nothing else apart from being”.
Being. Whole, timeless and unmoving, existing only now.
As the goddess implores us: “You ponder that!”